To his knowledge only the Jian was privy to that secret information. Three Oaths only knew that they must not lose Pak Han Min. Did that mean, then, that they would have to let Southasia Bancorp shrivel and die? What would be left of the yuhn-hyun if that should happen?
"What is the matter, si ji?" Since there was no definite word in Cantonese for "dear" or "darling," Neon Chow used other nicknames. Siji meant lion.
"What?" She had broken in on his musings.
"I saw you shudder. Do you have a chill? Is that why you have only been half listening to me all evening? Are you ill?"
"I am not ill, " Three Oaths said gruffly. He did not like it when she treated him like a child; it reminded him of his age. "And if I have not been as attentive as I should be, I"ve not been aware of it."
"But that shudder," Neon Chow persisted, seeming concerned.
"Only the air conditioning," he lied. "I should have asked them to change the table."
Seemingly mollified, she said, "I know you"ve had a lot on your mind lately. Since you"ve been spending so much time at the Sawyer Building I see new creases on that beautiful lion"s face. I don"t like that."
"I am tai pan," he said, "with a tai pan"s responsibilities. You know that."
"Somehow things were simpler a I think you were happier before Jake Maroc became Zhuan."
"You two do not get along."
"What is he to you?" Neon Chow said. "Just your nephew."
"He is the Jian"s son," Three Oaths said.
"And he is Zhuan. Why not one of your sons? Your number one son is more than qualified. Isn"t he deserving of such a signal honor?"
"Perhaps," Three Oaths said. "But this was not my decision to make."
"Are you not a great tai pan?" Neon Chow insisted.
Three Oaths said, "Why do you harbor these thoughts?"
"Because Jake Shi says nothing. If he were mute he would say as much to me. I do not trust him."
"You are being foolish. It is part of being Zhuan," Three Oaths said. "It is not an easy thing to do to cut yourself off from all outside disturbances. He must concentrate all his energies on leading the yuhn-hyun."
"Toward what end?" Neon Chow asked. "Don"t you think all of us deserve to know that?"
"One China," Three Oaths said, his eyes shining. "That has been the Jian"s dream for many decades. Mine, as well. A united China, strong, in the forefront of twenty-first-century world trade. A modern China: the remaking of the face of Asia."
"To do that," Neon Chow said shrewdly, "Beijing would have to divest itself almost entirely of Communism; it would have to become firm allies with the capitalist West."
"Yes, that"s quite true."
When sufficient time had pa.s.sed, Neon Chow excused herself. She went into the ladies" room. In a tiny wallpapered antechamber was a pay phone.
She dialed a number and waited while it rang.
"Waaaaay?"
"Peony," she said, identifying herself. "I need a rendezvous with Mitre as soon as possible."
"I"ll see what I can do," the voice said, tonelessly. "Please hold."
Neon Chow began to sweat in the tiny airless cubicle. Come on, she thought. What could take so long?
"Seventy-two hours."
And that"s the best these dung-eating bureaucrats can do, she thought. What do they know of the emergencies that arise in the field?
"Dew neh loh moh on that!" she shouted down the line. "This is Peony."
"All right, all right," the voice said. "Forty-eight hours. But that"s the limit."
By all the evil G.o.ds in h.e.l.l, she fumed silently. If I were a man Mitre wouldn"t treat me this way. d.a.m.n all men!
She went into the ladies" room. She tried to calm herself while she urinated. At the mirror she stared at her face as if she had never seen it before. Flaws and the marks of time were becoming more and more manifest. With a sudden wave of disgust she found that she hated her face.
Great Buddha! she thought. Communist China allied with the West! What a monstrous idea!
She knew that she could not return to the table in this agitated state. Three Oaths would pick up her inharmoniousness immediately. Above all, she knew, she must give him no cause for alarm. If she made him even the least bit suspicious, all would be lost.
She called upon her training, breathing deeply and slowly. Thus, she purged herself of all negative emotion. When she was ready she returned to the dinner table. Three Oaths had called for another pot of tea.
"Sit down, please," he said, filling her cup. "I have something to ask you."
Fear rushed like a stream through her and for a moment she was so dizzy that she thought her knees would not hold her. Calm yourself, she thought fiercely. Do you want to die so young?
She sat opposite him and because she knew that this was what was called for, she sipped at her tea. All the time she was thinking, I must get us back to the junk as quickly as possible. But how?
"What can it be," she said when she could trust herself to speak, "that gives you such a serious face? This is my birthday, after all. All serious topics are traditionally banished for the night."
"I"ve waited as long as I was able," he said by way of apology. "But certain business, er, problems dictate that the traditions be turned aside this one time."
"All right, siji," she said, in her little girl"s voice. "It will be as you wish." G.o.ds, what has been going on between the tai pan up at Sawyer"s office?
"Not as I wish. Not at all. Joss dictates this."
"Then I accept my joss." She smiled a smile as false as her words.
He nodded. "As I knew you would. I want you to contrive to meet Sir John Bluestone in the course of your job at the governor"s office."
Neon Chow had ceased to breathe. She was certain that all the color had drained from her face and she thought frenziedly, All G.o.ds bear witness! He knows!
"I want you to be as friendly as you can, even flirt with him. I want, in short, for you to present yourself to him."
Then she thought, He only suspects and is playing with me.
"I want, ultimately, for you to become his confidante. Convince him that you are growing tired of me. I am an old man, after all. Perhaps my s.e.xual prowess isn"t what it once was."
"But, si"
"It is a logical tack to take; it is, I think, what Mr. Bluestone would like to believe. I think, further, that it will tickle him to cuckold me. Especially when you tell him that you will spy on me for him."
"Si ji!"
"Now, now, that is only what I wish him to believe. In reality, you will be spying on him for me."
"Oh," she cried, clapping her hands, "you have the most deliciously clever mind!"
"The yuhn-hyun is desperate for inside information on Bluestone"s next moves. Will you do it?"
She was laughing to herself. He doesn"t know after all, he doesn"t even suspect! She wanted to burst into tears of relief. "Of course I"ll do it," she said, leaning toward him across the table. One hand had disappeared.
In a moment, Three Oaths felt her nimble fingers at the apex of his thighs. Even through his trousers she could do things that aroused him to a fever pitch.
"Come," she whispered huskily. She encircled his sacred member as it unfurled. "Let us go home as quickly as possible. I want to consummate my birthday a and our new business arrangement!"
The snake, when it came out of Jake"s shirt, was already hissing. He had bought it in the shop on Ladder Street. This was the time the hibernating snakes were divested of a fluid said by the Chinese to promote health and s.e.xual prowess. The warmth of being next to Jake"s skin had revived it from its winter torpor and now it was inquisitive about its immediate environment. Jake threw it at the tick.
She threw her arms up as the snake got tangled in the huge cowl neck of her sweater. -The gun went clattering down the alley. Jake watched, fascinated, as she struggled with it. In this, he made a mistake.
She struck him two lightning kites, partially missing with the first but connecting fully with the second. All the breath rushed from Jake"s lungs and he began to double over.
The snake was on the ground, coiled, its scales gleaming dully. It hissed. The woman"s left knee came up, catching Jake"s cheek. His vision blurred and he fell to the pavement.
Then she was bending, ripping off one high-heel. He turned his head and saw her gripping the top of the boot. The heel was turned toward him and he could see the streetlight catch along the tip. It was steel-sheathed.
The weapon swung downward and Jake rolled at the last possible instant. Heard the sharp report of the steel striking stone, sparks shooting up, and the arm already pulling back for the next strike.
Jake in sumi otoshi, his fingers sliding around the woman"s forearm and immediately he twisted to the left, pulling her with him, sucking her into the circular path of his own momentum.
She stumbled, went down on one knee, sc.r.a.ping it hard against the rough pavement. Jake used a kite at her wrist and the boot went skittering away into the permanent shadows of the alleyway.
He could hear the panting of her breath and he knew that he had a chance now, regaining his feet as she did, facing each other as she threw her other shoe into the darkness, equal terms reestablished; it was as if the last frantic few moments had never existed.
Until she came at him in a circular pattern and used the double palm change, and disrupted his strategy, he not fully prepared and cursing himself as he went down in great pain, having failed to follow Fo Saan and, ultimately, Lao Tzu, who counseled: in combat listen not with your ears which hear only ordinary things, listen not with your heart, which records only information of the rational world. Rather, listen with the breath so that one may await extraordinary events in a noncommittal fashion.
He had heard with his heart, had reacted to the woman, the rational, despite what his new-found experience told him: that she could not be as deadly as a male opponent. Had not been noncommittal but had antic.i.p.ated and in so doing had sealed his defeat.
Went down in a blinding welter of pain that made his ears ring, leached strength from his arms and shoulders. She had used a strike from Pa-kua, one of China"s oldest martial arts, one of the original war arts or wu-shu that stressed circular movements in attack and defense much like aikido, which was Jake"s mainstay.
Caught thus off-guard, he was defenseless. Her eyes followed the path her palms were taking. She moved first through her waist, low center of gravity, then, summoning the energy from that reserve, transferred it into her arms. Moved with blurring speed, got in four or five serious blows before Jake could recover enough to block the next two.
That surprised her and gave him a bit of breathing room. But again he antic.i.p.ated, sure that she would continue the attack with Pa-kua. Instead, she ripped the gold chain from around her throat, flicked it outward in a kasumi throw just as if the gold links were the steel manrikigusari, the j.a.panese weighted chain.
Struck him in the eye and immediately she had wrapped the chain around his neck. Pulling from both ends, her knee pressed into his chest.
Threw up both his hands, slamming the wrists against the inside of her arm, making her twist to her right, grasping her right wrist as she did so with his right hand, pulling it sharply down to his right while jamming his heel of his left hand against her right elbow.
Heard a crack, then a brief cry of surprise and pain from her as he pulled her hard forward, throwing her completely off-balance.
She was against him and his intention was to use an atemi, a hard percussion blow, wanting only to stun her. But saw the point of the knife just in time, divining her intent and knowing there was no time at all because of how close they were.
Had no choice then but to use the jut-hara, one of the lethal atemi, the one that broke the tips of the fifth and sixth ribs, using them as internal weapons, the concussion of the blow jamming them up into the heart.
Within six minutes he had boarded a red double-decker bus heading east. He went immediately to the upper level so that he had a better vantage point of the environment. The bus pulled out and he watched the street behind them until he was absolutely certain he was not being followed.
At the next stop, he got off, walked four blocks, using natural cover as an added precaution. Took another bus back west into Central.
The busy nightlife engulfed him. It turned the red bus phosph.o.r.escent. Faces of the pa.s.sengers were blue with reflected neon. The tick had possessed no I.D. Jake would have been surprised if there had been any. Pockets contained some money, no keys. Nothing at all save a tiny, hastily wrapped parcel wedged into the seam of the lining. Felt the shape of it in the palm of his hand. He unwrapped it and took a look. An uncut opal with exceptional fire.
At the stop he needed, Jake descended at the last possible instant. He was about to make his final run to his rendezvous and he was understandably cautious. If there was one tick, there might be others.
At last he felt safe enough to return to his parked Jaguar. With a squeal of burnt rubber, he took off, heading up, over the Peak, toward Aberdeen and the Jian.
Bliss was reading the Jian a story. It was one of his favorites, the one about the hare and the sister stars who return to the Middle Kingdom in the form of human beings.
The stories the Jian liked the best, she had found, were the ones involving transmogrification. She suspected that was because he believed this is what had happened to him.
It gave Bliss immense pleasure to read to him, though in point of fact much of their quiet time together was spent with him telling her stories about her great-grandfather, the first Jian, and the legendary garden where Zilin"s own philosophical nature had been formed.
Bliss, for all the love and training Three Oaths and his family had given her, felt essentially rootless. She barely remembered her mother and the time they had spent with the mountain tribes in the Shan Statesthough many years later Three Oaths had insisted that she go back to the Burmese highlands as if she would discover a sense of place there. As for her father, she did not even know his name. He had died while Bliss"s mother was six months pregnant with her.
In the Jian she had come home again, full circle. Within the special glow of his loving presence she had found the place she had come from. It was as if she had been conceived in the fabulous garden of her great-grandfather, which Zilin drew for her in his evocative word-pictures.
She discovered quite without warning that she loved him with a fierceness and dedication that she had previously thought impossible. It was not the kind of love she felt for Jake or even for Three Oaths.
This was a transcendent emotion that made her feel as if she were truly a part of the earth, the sea, the sky. She had never been a practicing Buddhist but the love she experienced for the Jian made her wish that she was.
She revered him above all other men but she was fully aware that he was a man for all that. The Jian believed that he was one of the celestial guardians of China. Thus his ren, his harvest that took the form of the yuhn-hyun in Hong Kong, had been born and was given shape by him over the course of fifty years.
It was a monumental enough undertaking for an entire country. For one man it seemed impossible. Yet, she knew, the Jian was not one man. He commanded a vast network throughout all of Asia perhaps even farther; who really knew the extent of the ren? She suspected not even Jake was as yet fully aware of the scope of the network Zilin had created. It was in the nature of the Jian to keep his secrets. He had needed to do so for so many years that it was now quite impossible for him to do otherwise.
Slowly, now, he was teaching Jake the meaning of the term Jian. Jake was not Jian but rather ZhuanJian meant creator; Zhuan meant managerand the difference was vast. Privately, in the most secret recesses of her own heart, Bliss wondered whether Jake would one day earn the t.i.tle of Jian.
She had finished the story. The hare had heroically sewed his role, aiding the sister stars who, now, had returned to their place in the heavens. All was right with the world.
Bliss looked down at the reclining figure. His ancient face was partly in shadow; she was not sure whether he was awake or asleep. She heard all about her the soft creaking of the junk"s fittings. It was very quiet. The guards made no sound. No one else was aboard. Bliss suspected that if her father had decided to remarry instead of taking a mistress such as Neon Chow, the children would have been made to stay aboard evenings. She did not know whether or not that would be a good thing. As Three Oaths was always quick to point out, today"s children were not like those of the past. They had less sense of their forebears, of tradition. He fought that loss, she knew, with every fiber of his being. But keeping the children locked on the junk was no answer and he knew that. Besides, he was just as often ash.o.r.e with Neon Chow until late in the night.
She rose, certain that the Jian had fallen asleep, "Are you going, Bliss?"
"No, a-yeh." She sat down again. "I thought you had drifted off."
"I almost did." His voice was as brittle as rice paper. "The pain woke me. It kept me suspended between."